


Duet

by Coal



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Coercion, Coffee Shop, Gen, Gore, Hypnotism, Post-Series, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:44:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coal/pseuds/Coal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ember wants vengeance on Phantom and the best way to do that is to go after his girlfriend. </p>
<p>The prompt was Gore. Think I covered that pretty well.</p>
<p>I wrote this for Alternativegothicweirdo on Tumblr for the Christmas Truce of 2015. <br/>I belatedly decided to post it here, but it has been on my Tumblr since Christmas Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alternativegothicweirdo](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Alternativegothicweirdo).



> Also posted here: http://thatonepoltergeist.tumblr.com/post/135955309526/secret-santa-duet

Ember let out a loud wail of frustration before bringing her guitar down again for another hit. 

Sam barely had time to block the hit with her broom. She was still on her back, still reeling from the first hit Ember had landed on her back. The Goth wasn’t sure how she had managed to keep ahold of the broom, but she was grateful that she did. 

The guitar, sturdier than any living-world instrument, pressed against the broom handle, forcing it to start to bend in Sam’s hands. Instead of pulling back to make for another swing, Ember pressed her weight forward, smiling when Sam’s arms began to tremble. The broom bent further and so Sam kicked out with both feet, her combat boots throwing the ghost further back and giving her enough time to stand. 

“What the fuck, Ember!” 

Instead of just standing, Ember floated off the ground and then righted herself in the air. Her expression was feral, eyes wide and her teeth barred. She didn’t show up to cause the usual property damage, she came to hurt someone. 

“What is going on!?”

“What, you don’t fancy having some girl-time?” 

“What does that even mean? Why are you attacking me, of all people?” Sam took a step back, brandishing the broom and wishing for all the world that she hadn’t left her bag with her Fenton Thermos and her cellphone in the employee room at the back of the store. She had taken the job at the small café not because she needed it but because she needed something to do while her friends were at their own jobs, but now she was regretting it. 

“Why do you think? You’re the halfa’s girl. Someone has to take you out. I volunteered.” 

“Take me out?” Sam tensed. She was feeling more terrified by the second but she wasn’t sure why. She had fought Ember before, but the ghost had never looked so unhinged before. 

Then Sam noticed that Ember’s eyes were red. Every other time she had seen the ghost, Ember had had green eyes. 

“Now, don’t go getting a big head. You’re not the only one getting a personal visit today. See, no one is happy with your boyfriend right now.” 

“Wha-what?” 

Ember slowly started to drift closer and Sam found herself trembling instead of moving back. “We helped save the world. We helped stopped that fucking asteroid. And now,” She waved a hand at Sam with an expectant tone. 

“And, and now ghost hunting is,” 

“Popular!” 

Sam flinched back at the shriek and then was running. If she could just get to her bag, she could capture Ember with no further hassle and then call Danny. 

“Now it’s not only your halfa boyfriend that’s screwing up our plans!” Ember arched her guitar over her head before she threw it, letting the improvised weapon spin through the air like a battle axe. 

Sam had been running straight—her focus had been entirely on the door ahead of her, the “Employees Only” sign giving her hope. 

The butt of Ember’s guitar hit the Goth in the back. Sam went down, skidding on the wood floors with a pained grunt. Before she could even contemplate trying to crawl for the door, Ember was on top of her, a knee digging painfully into Sam’s spine. 

“I’ve got you.” She grabbed onto Sam’s ponytail and pulled the girl’s head back. “Now,” Ember closed her eyes and waited for the angry trembling of her body to subside. Once visibly calm, she opened her eyes again and focused back on Sam. “I’m going to kill you.” 

The ghost then smashed Sam’s head into the floor. As she pulled up the Goth’s head she leaned forward and braced her free hand on the floor. Being closer, Ember could also see the state of Sam’s bleeding nose. It wasn’t broken after the first hit, but the second time, using even more force, it was. 

Sam groaned, her eyes squeezed shut. Ember pulled on Sam’s hair, bending her neck at an uncomfortable angle. “I had black hair when I was alive. Did you know that? No. I don’t think you did.” Ember pulled at her hair even more and pressed her knee into Sam’s back, crouching low to put her face right beside Sam’s. “What I think you _do_ know is that being dead sucks.” 

Ember released her grip on Sam’s hair. Her smile returned when Sam’s head fell forward of its own accord and hit the floor hard. 

Again, Sam was groaning. 

The ghost slowly moved off of the Goth. She retrieved her guitar and then moved to crouch down before Sam’s head. “Being in the Ghost Zone—that also fucking sucks.” 

“That’s,” Sam keened as, when she scowled, it moved her broken nose. She was still determined to speak and raised her head and started over. “That’s where you belong!” 

“No. No, it’s not.” Carefully, Ember began to pluck a soft tune on the instrument. “See, when we die, we don’t end up in the Ghost Zone. We pop up as ghosts right where we died.” Ember gracefully slid to a seated position on the ground, still playing a simple tune on the guitar. “All those ghost hunters your boy inspired, they’re not letting those ghosts adjust. They’re not letting ‘em grieve for their own fucking lives.” Then, in a softer voice, “That stuff is important.”

When she started to sing, her voice was so soft that Sam didn’t hear the words. Even when Sam realized what was going on, she couldn’t register what the actual words were. 

The only thing that got through Sam’s head was that she was being hypnotized. 

For once the song wasn’t another rendition of Ember’s “Remember”. This song spun a tale of being ignored and a raging fire still, but also of having nothing but a name left. 

Ember didn’t smile as Sam fought with herself to stand, a blank expression on the Goth’s face. She kept singing, watching as Sam moved towards the coffee shop’s counter, reaching with both hands for the large coffee percolator meant for display. The thing was easily two feet, looking more like an alchemist’s equipment than anything else. Sam only held it long enough to move it away from the counter. She let it drop to the floor, glass shards scattering everywhere. 

Sam dropped to her knees in the middle of the glass mess. The crunch and whine of glass breaking and sliding across the floor was somehow timed to fit with Ember’s song. The sounds only added to the ghost’s song. Sam was still in controlled state, but she could feel the pain. She could feel the glass stabbing through her tights and into her skin. 

The song, though slow and sad, started to quicken, just slightly, and Sam found her hands clumsily grabbing two large chunks of glass. 

She stabbed the two shards into her bare midriff. Her left hand released the shard, pulling away while her right hand tightened its grip and began to _pull_. Sam dragged the in an arc, up and over her navel. The glass didn’t cut neatly and her skin fought against the shard. The resulting cut was a jagged mess, deeper at random points. 

When she had completed the arc, she released the shard, leaving both of the first two shards in her body. 

The next two shards she grabbed were not as large, but they didn’t need to be. Those next two she lifted up to her face. 

She pressed them beneath her eyes and dragged them down, scarring sloppy copies of Ember’s own eyeliner. This time the glass was not left in her skin and they dropped from her hands.

For one brief beat, the music stopped and Sam could hear her own ragged breathing. She could move her trembling, bleeding hands under her own will and see how torn up they were, how the blood poured down over her arms and dripped. 

All Sam could think was that she wanted to die. She wanted the pain to be over. But Ember’s song continued and the haze that was the ghost’s spell wrapped around her mind again. 

The pain, she could still feel the pain, but Sam didn’t have any more thoughts of killing herself. She could only think about the pain and how she was compelled to cause more. She pushed herself upright, still on her knees and still facing towards Ember.

For all intents and purposes, the two girls were performing two halves of the same act. 

Sam sluggishly wrapped her arms around her stomach. The edges cut into her forearms as she pushed the shards down. When Ember hit a particularly high note, she dragged her arms away, letting the glass slit her arms open as they moved away. 

Then she pressed her fingers against where the shards still in her torso were. Her nails dug in between the glass and her flesh and she began to push and wiggle her fingers in, worsening the cuts. She worried the shard she had made with her left hand, but was more aggressive with the other. 

The arcing cut she had made with her right hand earlier was spread wide by her searching fingers. She moved her hand inside and across the now gaping wound, from the edge with the shard back to where the glass had first stabbed into her. 

She pushed her hand in deeper, past her knuckles, and grabbed onto part of her intestines. Slick, and soft, Sam’s grip on the fleshy tube was loose enough that she felt the coils of the organ move about within her. No amount of screaming within her own head could drown out Ember’s song, though, and so she continued to slowly pull the organ out through the cut she had made and the shard at the edge of the cut was caught in the intestine. It cut her skin open even more as she fought to pull the organ out. The shard sliced open the intestine as it was pulled out of Sam, then falling to the floor with a wet splat. 

Sam didn’t notice as Ember’s red eyes shifted back to green, but the spell on her mind weakened. She wasn’t free like she had been moments before, but she was able to look down and see the mess she had been making more clearly. Her eyes focused in on her shaking grip on her intestines and then she was crashing forward again, bile rising up without any warning. 

She vomited onto the mess of glass and her own blood, onto her own intestines as her bending forward pushed more of it out of her. 

Ember’s song tapered off and Sam’s life did the same.


End file.
